High Speed Mask Inspection Data Prep Flow based on Pipelining

Mask manufacturers are continuously challenged as a result of the explosive growth in mask pattern data volume. This paper presents a new pipelined approach to mask data preparation for inspection that significantly reduces the data preparation times compared to the conventional flows used today. The focus of this approach minimizes I/O bottlenecks and allows for higher throughput on computer clusters. This solution is optimized for the industry standard OASIS.MASK format. These enhancements in the data processing flow, along with optimizations in the data preparation system architecture, offer a more efficient and highly scalable solution for mask inspection data preparation.